Please help me understand "low carbs"

[StefScarf 10]

I am interested in find a good resource, maybe online to help me understand a low carb diet.

 

I have type 2, although I am not taking medication, I am trying this through diet and exercise. I love going to the gym and by hubby keeps calling me "a gym rat" (in a playful way) and I dont mind. However I am stuck with the weight loss and I was thinking about lowering my carbs, either during my meals or only having them in the morning and afternoon and cutting them out of dinners. (this family is Italian and no pasta just wont fly)

 

I am looking for "healtier" choices and some different options and I am trying to understand how the lower carbs, raise protein and fat work.

 

Any help that someone could provide me with would be welcome.

[rwallen 99]

Being a newbie myself I don't know if I can give much advice but I have been watching my carbs and to be honest not much else. I was told to limit my meals to around 4 carb choices, 60 carbs. I usually don't go over and sometimes I don't consume that much. With the exception of breakfast my meals usually include a meat, mashed potatoes and a veggie. As you know from my intro post I have lost weight. I am losing it slowly and had a plateau for about 3 weeks but I am losing again. I just started bike riding and walking. Maybe that has been instrumental in my breaking the plateau. Watch my carbs I try to get the most bang for my buck. Why have a 1/2 cup of somethng if you can have a cup of something else. I will tell you that I have started to watch my calories as well but not initially. I don't believe that I eat any more than 1500 to 1800 a day. As others have said, what works for one doesn't always work for another. Anyway, congrats on the progress so far.

 

I am interested in find a good resource, maybe online to help me understand a low carb diet.

 

I have type 2, although I am not taking medication, I am trying this through diet and exercise. I love going to the gym and by hubby keeps calling me "a gym rat" (in a playful way) and I dont mind. However I am stuck with the weight loss and I was thinking about lowering my carbs, either during my meals or only having them in the morning and afternoon and cutting them out of dinners. (this family is Italian and no pasta just wont fly)

 

I am looking for "healtier" choices and some different options and I am trying to understand how the lower carbs, raise protein and fat work.

 

Any help that someone could provide me with would be welcome.

[jwags 9,219]

I was dx'd 4 years ago with a fasting bg of 240. I had always exercised and I was a gym rat, too but it didn't stop my diabetes. I started low carb , anywhere from 30-50 per day. My fastings are now 80-100 and HbA1c is 5.3. So low carb works. Most of us are most insulin resistant in the mornings so breakfasts are no carb. I eat most of my carbs in the afternoon and dinners are very low carb. For most of us Pasta is on the avoid list, because it really spikes us. Some find that Dreamfields pasta is ok , but it still spikes me.

[xMenace 207]

I'm going to address a couple of other current topics with my reply

- why exercise doesn't burn fat

- why skipping breakfast is not necessarily bad

 

Fat levels are controlled by hormones. Insulin is the main one, but others have lesser impacts. They are like doors. increase your insulin levels and you push fuel into cells and prevent it from escaping. Without insulin, our cells can release fat and not store any.

 

Carbohydrates cause insulin to be released. Our number one priority is to normalize blood sugars. We will shove this sugar into cells or expell it from our bodies until we're normalized. All cells get fueled to their limit. Fat has a higher limit. What this means is that when you eat a plate of syrup covered pancakes, your body goes into overdrive to normalize BGs. Fat accumulates. Then over the next hours as insulin levels drop, you will release this stored energy for consumption. The more carbs we take it, the hiogher our sinulin levels get, and the bigger the pressure to store fat.

 

When we eat a bowl full of butter -- mostly fat. We do get some insulin released, but mostly this fat gets circulated to cells that can use it. Since there's no insulin, it won't be used by adipose tissue. Review: fat is stored as triglycerides which is three amino acids and a glycerol thingy (sugah).

 

Exercise uses energy. Carb load first and top it up with a sweet drink, you get insulin. Fat won't burn. You either use fuel provided, glycogen stores, or you consume more. If supply is less than demand, you shut down.

 

Now if you only consume fat, you may not be able to keep up to the demand. It's my understanding that fat breakdown is slower -- hence the need for athletes to use superfuels (sugah). It's very likely that exercise will again raise demand for food which you will satisfy with sugah intake and shut down the fat burning pathway.

 

Skipping breakfast shuts off fuel intake but also doesn't cause fat storage. Your fat is free to burn. The question remains whether your fat release can keep up with your energy demands. Our dawn phenomenons play a part too. We are more prone to fat storage and less fat release in the mornings due to high insulin resistance -- our insulin levels will be higher. I've been doing fat-only breakfasts lately with great results. I'm down 9lbs in the last two weeks after months of treading water.

 

If you want to eat carbs, do so at lunch. Our IR tends to be lowest in the afternoons.

 

We have to be mindful of glucagon releases. These cause gluconeogenesis. Intense releases result from big meals, fasting , intense exercise, and hypoglycemia. IMHO we shouldn't eat much protein or carb when glycogen big releases are expected. break teh fast with something low quantity and fatty. Review: 58% of protein and 10% of fats are converted to glucose.

 

What does this mean?

 

There's a combination of factors invloved: insulin resistance, insulin levels, glygen release, amylin release (not discussed here), and other hormone levels that determine whether fat can be burned. Understand this: fat WILL NOT BE BURNED with insulin present in the cell regardless of what you do -- exercise, drink water, or swing a chicken over your head.

 

We can influence this doorway be food composition and timing to match our IR and glycogen releases. Low carbs, small meals, and carbs matched with IR and exercise.

 

----------------------

 

But fat and cholesterol is bad for us!

 

There are mountains of evidence showing it's not, and extremely little to none "proving" it is.

 

Saturated fat and heart disease risk: Expert panel perspective

 

Meta-analysis of prospective cohort studies evaluating the association of saturated fat with cardiovascular disease

 

There's a lot of discussion about these topics, too much for this post.